Netsimulyzer - a 3D visualizer for Network Simulator 3

Netsimulyzer - 3D visualizer

Netsimulyzer is a third-party software that can show the visuals of the ns3 output in a 3D virtual world. we can make the nodes look either like land drones, drones, smartphones, etc. We can construct buildings, towers, antennas, etc within the visualizer and the movement of the nodes can be simulated as well.  Here is the screenshot of a simulation generated using ns3 and shown in the Netsimulyzer. 

This post will help you to understand and install Netsimulyzer in Ubuntu 22.04 and add a module to support ns3 in generating the Netsimulyzer JSON file.

Netsimulyzer

Installing Netsimulyzer in Ubuntu and NS3

Prerequisites

• Ubuntu 22.04 OS
• ns-3.38
• Netsimulyzer version 1.0.7 

There are older versions also available for other distributions of ubuntu., but we will focus on these versions

Steps for installation:

1. ns-3.38 along with Netsimulyzer module to be installed.
2. Netsimulyzer software to be installed on Ubuntu 22.04 (the software can be installed in Windows also)

The above software will load the .json script and can be visualized.

Step 1: Installation of ns.3-38

Already i published a video in my channel on ns3, you can use the following link to see the video 

Open a terminal

$ sudo apt update

$ sudo apt install cmake pkg-config qtbase5-dev libqt5charts5-dev g++ python3 cmake ninja-build git gir1.2-goocanvas-2.0 python3-gi python3-gi-cairo python3-pygraphviz gir1.2-gtk-3.0 ipython3 tcpdump wireshark sqlite sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev qtbase5-dev qtchooser qt5-qmake qtbase5-dev-tools openmpi-bin openmpi-common openmpi-doc libopenmpi-dev doxygen graphviz imagemagick python3-sphinx dia imagemagick texlive dvipng latexmk texlive-extra-utils texlive-latex-extra texlive-font-utils libeigen3-dev gsl-bin libgsl-dev libgslcblas0 libxml2 libxml2-dev libgtk-3-dev lxc-utils lxc-templates vtun uml-utilities ebtables bridge-utils libxml2 libxml2-dev libboost-all-dev 

Install the above complete packages for ns-3.38 and as well netsimulyzer

$ cd ns-allinone-3.38/ns-3.38/contrib

$ wget https://github.com/usnistgov/NetSimulyzer-ns3-module/archive/refs/tags/v1.0.7.zip -O NetSimulyzer-ns3-module-master.zip

$ unzip NetSimulyzer-ns3-module-master.zip

$ mv NetSimulyzer-ns3-module-1.0.7 netsimulyzer

Now 

$ cd ../..

$ ./build.py --enable-tests --enable-examples 

(The above process will take at least 20 minutes to compile all the packages).

Meanwhile, we will go to the second step:

Step 2: Installation of Netsimulyzer software in Ubuntu 22.04

Open a new terminal and paste the following command 

$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/usnistgov/NetSimulyzer.git

$ cd NetSimulyzer/

$ mkdir build

$ cd build

$ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..

$ cmake --build . --parallel 

(The above command may throw some error or bug, so you can use the following statement)

or

$ cmake --build .

(this will use only one core and hence it will be slow, but it really works)

To check whether ns3 was installed successfully, here is the command to check

$ cd ns-3.38

$ ./ns3 run hello-simulator

you get an output of Hello Simulator

To check whether the Netsimulyzer works,

There are some examples in the Netsimulyzer module examples, we can move some of those examples to the scratch folder of ns-3.38 

I have copied all the .cc files from the following folder 

ns-3.38/contrib/NetSimulyzer/examples 

to 

ns-3.38/scratch

and now I am going to run the above example using the following command 

Open a new terminal 

$ cd ns-allinone-3.38/ns-3.38/

$ ./ns3 run scratch/mobility-buildings-example.cc 

A file with a .json file is created and it can be opened using the Netsimulyzer software

$ cd NetSimulyzer/build

$ ./netsimulyzer

So both the software is installed.